


Sunday Lunch

by JudasComplex



Series: Detective and the Delinquent [5]
Category: Persona 4
Genre: Adorable, F/M, First Dates, Picnics, about damn time, missed these kids, oh hey there long time no see
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:54:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26982457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JudasComplex/pseuds/JudasComplex
Summary: It's been a month since the storm, and Naoto still isn't quite sure what to make of Kanji Tatsumi. But it seems that the young man himself might have something he'd like to say...
Relationships: Shirogane Naoto/Tatsumi Kanji
Series: Detective and the Delinquent [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/246913
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	Sunday Lunch

**Author's Note:**

> I am a wee bit out of practice with these kids, and I literally just wrote this and am posting it, so I apologize for any typos. But hey! A story for you! Much love, friends.

It had been nearly a month since the storm, and while Naoto couldn't exactly say that her relationship with Kanji had gotten _simpler_ , it seemed to...exist? More? He was still just as uncertain and awkward as ever, but the time they'd spent together that weekend had eased a bit of it. And in a surprise to herself, she...was enjoying it. Not that she would say a word of that to Yu--at this point, for more reasons than one, given the last conversation she'd had with him--or rather, brief text message asking if something had happened, which he hadn't responded to. Given the surrounding evidence, she knew what was likely, and didn't push.

And she certainly wasn't going to bring her own debacle of a "love life" into the fray. He clearly had enough on his mind.

But there was something relaxing about being able to just...exist with a person, or group of people. Sometimes it was the old Investigation Team, sometimes it was just her, Kanji, and Naoki... She had friends.

What a strange thought.

But the fact that they were all so much more comfortable around each other made the text message she'd just received all the more bizarre. It was the end of the school day on Saturday, and she was getting ready to head out when her phone buzzed--with a message from Kanji.

_From: Kanji Hey, are you busy tomorrow?_

She blinked at her phone, then looked around. She could have sworn she'd just seen him, but perhaps not.

_NOT AWARE OF PLANS. Y?_

This was new. Kanji never took it on himself to initiate...well, anything. Had something gone wrong? Did he need help with something at the shop? But no, tomorrow was Sunday and she knew that Tatsumi-san usually kept the store closed on Sundays. So what could possibly be the reasoning...?

Unsurprisingly, it took ages before Kanji returned the text.

_I figured maybe I could get you lunch or something, to say thanks for the udon._

Now she was well and truly baffled.

_U KNOW IS NOT NECESSARY, Y? WAS GIFT RE: STORM & COLD._

Of course, remembering that whole situation brought back the edges of that dream she'd had, which she spent most of her time studiously ignoring. And again, Narukami _was_ convinced that Kanji cared for her more than he let on most days... Hm. The plot thickens. 

His response was faster this time.

_I know. I want to, though. I mean, if you're ok with it._

Naoto had to bite back a small smile. Here were some of the usual nerves sinking in.

_SURE. WHEN/WHERE?_

If Kanji wanted to buy her lunch, then she was willing to let him make the gesture, no matter how unnecessary it was. Part of her was impressed he was messaging her at all.

Of course, part of her wasn't sure how she was staying so calm about something so utterly foreign. Then again, this was Kanji. He'd already seen the worst of her in the past few months. What more was there for her to feel concerned about? He knew her sex, he knew about her parents, he knew about the storms. Those were the big ones.

_Out on the lookout point? Like...noon-ish?_

The lookout point? That...was unexpected. _Like most of this conversation has been._ She shook her head.

_WILL C U THERE._

She'd just wait to see what he had in store, then.

* * *

Of course, over night her mind had come up with a thousand reasons why this was a terrible idea, and why had see agreed to it, and what did any of this mean, and what if...what if...what if. She couldn't sit still.

_Is this a date? Did he ask me on a date?_ It hadn't even occurred to her at the time, but asking someone to lunch on a day off, and bringing them to a place where food was not usually provided, sounded an awful lot like what dates were supposed to be. But it wasn't like she had anyone to ask. She still didn't want to call Narukami, and she wasn't really close enough with any of the others to pose this question to them. Not when she didn't know what was going on. If it were a question of "what does one do on a date" then she might have been able to consider it. But "do you think this is a date and how should I approach it when I'm not sure" wasn't a clear question.

She was going to make herself sick at this rate.

Yakushiji and her grampa, bless them, hadn't asked a word and had simply let her walk around the estate, burning off whatever nervous energy she could before announcing that she was headed into town and would be back later. She could only hope that she'd regain at least a fraction of her usual composure by the time she got there. 

And perhaps that was what was most unnerving about this all--was that she felt so off-balance by it. For all she knew, Kanji was going to be there with bowls from Aiya, nonchalant as ever (or at least as close to it as he got) and there was nothing more to this. But with Tatsumi, it seemed like there was always something more to what he was doing. That there was something more than just a thank you for the udon.

...Did she _want_ there to be something else?

She didn't know.

Before she'd realized it, she'd ended up just a bit away from the pavilion - and she paused, closing her eyes and calming her breathing. _Don't be ridiculous, Shirogane. You can eat lunch with your friend. You do it almost every day at school. This is no different. ...probably._

Stepping closer to the clearing, there was a brief frisson of panic when she didn't see Kanji at the table--but then it faded as she saw him seated on the ground...on a blanket? He wasn't facing her, and even from a distance she could see him worrying at the edge of the blanket with the hand he was leaning back on. _He...made a picnic?_

When he still didn't turn around as she got closer, she cleared her throat--which, unsurprisingly, made him jump and turn around. "Oh! H-hey." He scrambled to his feet, absently brushing off his pants as he stood.

"Good afternoon, K-- Kanji." It was still an effort to remember he'd asked her to refrain from using the honorific. "I...I'm not sure what I was expecting, but this...was not it."

Kanji frowned. "I...I dunno, it seemed like... I'm sorry if it's weird..."

She quickly shook her head. "No! No, not at all. Simply...unexpected. My apologies, I didn't mean to make it sound that way." She stepped over to stand next to him. "Thank you for doing this."

"Nah, it's no big deal." He gestured, and she sat on the edge of the blanket to his left, as he sat back down where he'd been. "Just wanted to say thanks."

"You do realize that the entire point of the udon was as a thank you for all you'd done?" She looked over, hoping the humor would come through in the sentence.

His eyes flickered to her, then back down as his face flushed. "I guess. Still don't feel like much to me. Jus' glad I could be there."

"As am I," she replied, and surprised herself at how much she meant it. Not just that someone had been there that night...but that _he_ had. As Kanji began to pull things out of the basket next to him, she just watched, bemused. "You've put a great deal of thought into this."

"Not jus' gonna half-ass it," he mumbled, setting a bento in front of her. "An' I couldn't make up my mind about some stuff, so I jus' did all of it."

Naoto felt a small smile sneak onto her lips. "A valid response."

By the time he was done, they each had a medium-sized bento box, and then to compliment it, there was a plate of watermelon, a thermos of some beverage she assumed, and a small bowl of seasoned edamame. Opening the bento, she found onigiri, a few pieces of inarizushi, a korokke, some kara-age, and a few pieces of cucumber with miso. She must have had some kind of unexpected look to that, as she heard Kanji ask a moment later, "Everything okay?"

Her head popped up to look at him. "Oh--yes, of course. I'm...simply impressed. This is quite the spread, Kanji-kun." She bit her tongue, but he didn't seem to react.

"Nothin' too fancy. Like I said, I had t' stop myself from makin' everything I thought of." He gestured to the thermos. "'At's hojicha, if you want some."

"O-oh, certainly." Before she could move, Kanji had grabbed the thermos, produced two cups from thin air, and poured one out to hand to her. "Thank you."

"Mm-hmm." He poured himself a glass, then looked at her. "Go ahead, dig in."

"Ah--mm." She nodded, and turned her attention to the food. Sampling a few bites of the various pieces, she wasn't surprised to find it was excellent. She'd had Kanji's cooking before--usually when she forgot her own lunch, or his seemed more interesting than what she had brought. (Usually his opinion on the matter, but she'd learned not to fight.) It was the silence as they ate that seemed tense. What could she say? It wasn't as if they hadn't already seen each other the previous day. And neither of them were good at small talk under the best of circumstances, which this was not, by far. But though it was awkward...as odd as it seemed, it was a familiar awkward. It was something she knew, and knew how to deal with--inasmuch as she knew how to deal with anything relating to Kanji Tatsumi.

If nothing else, being distracted by thoughts of what to do about the silence managed to actually take up most of the time they were eating, and before she truly realized it, they'd finished the meal. Kanji was shifting around some of the plates, trying to bring order to them, and pointedly not looking at her--as usual. "That was excellent, Kanji. I truly appreciate your generosity."

"M'not done yet." He gave her a quick glance back, and she could see an amused--or even, dare she say, mischievous?--smile on his face. _Now that's a change._ But she wanted to see where this was going. "Now, ya gotta go easy on me, 'cause I never made 'em this size before."

She blinked. "Very well...?"

From the basket he produced a pair of very small cakes--clearly designed to be individual, but just as neatly put together and decorated as a larger one would be. "Ma suggested shortcake but I din't wanna try an' make a whole damn thing so..." He gestured. "Strawberry shortcake."

She couldn't help the charmed smile. "This is wonderful, Kanji. You made this yourself?"

"Made it all myself. Prob'ly woulda looked nicer bigger but eh, I'm okay with how they turned out."

"They're...well, adorable." Even out of her peripheral vision, she could see her face go red at that, but he was still smiling. "You continue to surprise."

"What c'n I say. I c'n make cute shit."

"Indeed." She bit back the laugh and opted to sample the cake--and if she thought the meal had been good, he'd been saving the big guns for dessert. "Oh."

He paused mid bite of his own. "Mm?"

"I..." She shook her head. "This is...truly remarkable." 

Kanji shrugged, taking his own bite. "S'okay."

"No, I mean that. This is...if I'm truly honest, this is as good as any I've had from a store."

Now he was really red. "M'not that good."

"You undersell yourself." Which seemed to be his other forte, outside of "making cute shit," as he put it. Though as he had no further comment, she turned back to the cake and--in an almost embarrassingly short amount of time--made short work of it. It took her a moment to realize she was just sitting with the fork in her mouth, staring at the plate and wishing that there were just a few more bites--and then another moment later noticed Kanji watching her with a hand over his mouth. "Hm...?"

He started a few different sentences, then shook his head. "Hol' still." She did such, and he reached over with his napkin to brush at her cheek--pulling it away with a small bit of whipped cream on it. Now it was her turn to flush red. "I ain't never seen you that focused on somethin' 'at wasn't a case before."

She pulled the fork out of her mouth, setting it on the plate. "I did mention that it was excellent."

"Ya did." Again, she could see sentence after sentence die in his eyes before he finally looked away, the amused smile fading from his expression. "Listen, I uh...I wanted...um." He cleared his throat, tilting his head to the side to make his neck crack. "I'm gonna screw this up, but if I don' do it now I'm never gonna do it, so I'm just gonna...do it."

"Yes...?" She kept her eyes on him, hands folded in her lap. His tone was familiar, though not common - it wasn't dissimilar to the way he'd sounded when they spoke after he'd gotten her back to the shop in the storm. Whatever he was saying, this was something he'd thought through...just like everything else today.

"I...ah, shit." He rubbed at the back of his neck. "I know we're not like...best friends or whatever, an' I know you've got like...detective stuff an' whatever with college, an' tha's probably gonna take you away from Inaba. But...I jus'... If I don't say somethin', I'm gonna regret it. An' you don' have to say anything back, or even like, feel the same, nothin'. I jus' figure you should know, an' then it can jus' be out in the open and done with." He paused, and she bit back the urge to respond, for fear that if she spoke, he'd lose his nerve. "Cause I keep runnin' myself in circles an' nothin's gonna change if I jus' keep doin' that. So I jus'..." His voice gave out again, and this time she leaned in to see if she could catch his gaze from where he'd locked it on the blanket.

"Kanji?"

"I really like you," he blurted out, face beet red and eyes closed. "An' I've really liked you for a long time, even before like your Shadow an' everything an' we figured out you were a girl an' I din't want to say anything cause I know I'm probably the las' person on the planet tha' you'd be interested in an' I was jus' gonna stay quiet an' just let it go but after th' storm an' everything I just--I din't want to see you like that again an' if there was something I could do to do that I was gonna try and if tha' meant fallin' on my face like this then I was gonna do it but I guess I jus' figured it was fair t' at least let you know though I mean I haven't exactly been super subtle, or at least tha's what everyone tells me, an'--"

Naoto reached over and set a hand over his mouth, which pulled him up short - but didn't get him to open his eyes. She pulled her hand back and he stayed silent. _Well then. How many times have I been told that this is the case, and yet still I manage to be caught unaware...?_ She tried to catch her mind up to everything he'd said, hoping to put together some kind of rational response that also didn't sound like...well, her. "Why do you assume that you would be unlikely to catch my attention?" That seemed like the best mode of attack.

If nothing else, it got him to open his eyes and look at her like she'd lost her mind. "Really? Yer like the smartest person in our class an' a detective an' whatever else. I'm what? A delinquent who makes stuffed animals an' gets made fun of for it."

"And?" He didn't have a response to that. "Kanji, relationships of any variety, romantic or otherwise, did not occur to me in general until sometime last year. You were no more or less likely to make an impression on me than anyone else." She wasn't going to mention Narukami. That was...a whole level beyond what needed to be considered in this moment. "Now..." She sighed. "While it is still not something that I spend a great deal of time thinking about, it...is something I've considered, in a more general sense. Mainly because I cannot think of many people I would ever feel that comfortable around. I have lived much of my life at an arm's distance from the rest of the world. You and the others in the Investigation Team are...some of the first real friends I've ever had. That alone has been overwhelming. To imagine anything further..." She shook her head. "There is only so much I can process at one time."

"M'sorry for bringing it up," Kanji muttered.

"No." Her voice was more emphatic than she'd intended, and it startled Kanji enough to look up at her - and she was certain her face was burning just as bright as his. "I assure you, as much as the others may have told you that you were being obvious, I have been told more than a few times myself that I have been refusing to see the obvious. At first I refused to believe them, simply because...we do not always communicate well with each other." She saw him fight back a snort at that. "But...you ran through a storm, to find me when you knew something was wrong. You fought tooth and nail to ensure my comfort over anything else. And..." Now she had to look down, unable to look him in the eye. "In the midst of all the chaos and panic I was facing, you gave me a moment of peace when you held me in front of the shrine. And that moment has been on my mind a great deal since then."

Now the silence was thick. "Um..." Kanji finally managed, but didn't come up with anything else to follow.

"I am far from proficient in dealing with matters of emotion," Naoto continued, still staring at her hands. "And I cannot say whether or not I reciprocate your feelings. But...I know that you are...different. Special...to me. And...I would..." Her voice failed, but Kanji gave her the quiet to find the words again. "If you are amenable, I would be interested in...seeing what that might mean. And if, perhaps, it might...be some variation on what you have expressed to me."

It was a long moment before anything happened, and even though she saw him do it, when Kanji reached over and linked his pinky finger with hers to tug her hand away from her knee, she jumped. But when she looked over at him, his eyes were on their hands and a small shy smile was edging onto his lips. "Well, maybe we c'n be bad at this together. Figure it out as we go."

It took her a moment, but when their eyes met she managed a small smile in return. "Yes. I...I'd like that."

And as the genuine smile Kanji gave her sent shivers through her body, for the first time, she truly believed that maybe...just maybe...a romance wasn't entirely off the table for her.


End file.
